VeloNews awards 2017: Huffman and Rally are domestic standouts

Evan Huffman stood in the middle of Magic Mountain Parkway on the edge of Santa Clarita, California, with the far-off look of someone still processing his own accomplishment. “I can’t believe that we just did it,” he said over the boom of the race announcer. “It’s still just surreal.”

What Huffman did was leave behind a field of WorldTour teams, and some of the best riders in the world, to win a stage of the Amgen Tour of California. He would do it again two days later, putting two of seven stages in the back pocket of one rider on a domestic team in America’s biggest stage race.

It was indeed a surreal season. Huffman, who raced for two years with the Astana WorldTour team before returning to America and its plucky Rally program, was the standout rider within his standout team. He finished tied on points for the KOM in California, in addition to his two stage wins, and topped that with an overall victory and one more stage at the Tour of Alberta near the end of the season.